“We wrote our first blog post before we wrote our first line of code.”
- Jon Miller, founder, Marketo

Blogging is important for every business. So we don’t just offer ghostwriting services for others. We blog for ourselves. Why? To discuss big issues such as content strategy, commissioning and ROI, as well as tactics for effective copy creation or editing, not to mention news about Collective Content.

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We recently picked up on some research that, while a few months old, came out as a 2012 Content Marketing Report. You can find some great notes on it here by Hivefire CEO Pawan Deshpande but if you don’t fancy registering to download the whole report here are a few more observations.

The study found nine out of 10 B2B marketers are already on board with content marketing – yet it’s a growing field. The Collective Content view on this is simple: you can have all the channels in the world, all the marketing nous, but you need some substance to get would-be customers properly engaged with you.

Top content marketing methods

79% – Articles

74% – Social media (other than blogs)

65% – Blogs

63% – E-newsletters

58% – Case studies

56% – In-person events

52% – Videos

51% – White papers

46% – Webinars

31% – Microsites

31% – Magazines (traditional print)

30% – Traditional media

24% – Research reports

22% – Branded content tools

20% – Print newsletters

16% – E-books

16% – Podcasts

15% – Mobile content

14% – Digital magazines

10% – Virtual conferences

– Nearly all these areas grew year-on-year. The exception is anything with the word ‘print’ in its name.

– Adoption rates, for most of the above tactics, are higher at large companies. But there are notable exceptions eg 78% of medium-sized companies reported using social media but the number was less for large companies at 65%

– It was the first year Google+ was an option for respondents – and it was in with a bullet, 13% saying they’re making use of it

– Echoing those with the highest follower counts across social media, those marketers who replied saying they use all the above tactics are more likely to consider themselves “effective”.

In our upcoming post we’ll be talking about organisations’ main goals for content marketing and criteria used to measure success.

The study was based on interviews with 1,092 B2B marketers in August 2011.